I never knew she had paralysis, and to my surprise I learnt that three years previously she had developed paralysis of the right leg after a month of high fever during which the Surgeon Generals and I.M.S. big shots of three North Indian Provinces had liberally plugged on to her massive doses of quinine calling it “intensive treatment of Malaria”, and since then she was unable to move. Just a word about quinine dosage. The League of Nations Committee had warned against the use of massive quinine dosage because it destroys the natural defensive mechanism in the malaria patient.
But in practice the military medical services give nothing less than thirty grains a day, and I have still to meet an allopath who knows how to use quinine wisely and properly, including the professor of Pharmacology who contributed the professor of Pharmacology who contributed to the chapter on Quinine in the American edition of Cushnys Test book of Pharmacology. And quite unintentionally given, poor simple Pulsatilla began to remove a 3 year old paralysis.
In the course of a few months the paralysis disappeared, the leg gained strength from day to day, a bed ridden lady went again to official functions and walked about the garden with a walking stick. Pulsatilla on generals only. The “respectable aristocratic class” which till then had been told that Homoeopathy was all a fraud, woke up with a start and all of a sudden an out-cast struggling Homoeopath and Homoeopathy became acceptable in “Society”
Kreche, the German Surgeon, in “The Doctors Message” mentions the case of a young practitioners who used his common sense and gave a wealthy industrialist Pot. Iodide thus curing his chronic sciatica which had defied all specialists because they dared not believe that a wealthy industrialist could contract such an unspeakable disease as Syphilis. Courage to see things rightly made the unknown little practitioner famous overnight. My father had taught his students.- “The longer and more venerable looking the beard, the more the likelihood of concealed venereal diseases”-at least in my Province.
“FAMOUS CASE” NO.3.
A man of 55 came to our Poor Dispensary for Osteo-Arthritis. Both knees were enormously chronically enlarged. The left, more, the right less, the X-Ray showed Arthritis deformans changes, ankylosis for the last 13 years. He walked with the help of two people, unripe cataract stationary in both eyes for 16 years, discharged by the Medical Board as “incurable” 12 years ago. What were we to do with such a case? What we noticed was that even in the summer he was wrapped up warmly up to the nose, that there was an ancient history of gonorrhoea, that he was worse sunrise to sunset. Allen (Materia Medica of the Nosodes) as a wonderful description of such a case. One dose of Medorrhinum. M., we felt, would do no harm.
Three weeks later the same old man came in walking alone with the aid of a stick, with the knee joints improved beyond all imagination, almost normal. Only difficulty while squatting for stools. Further surprise was a sixteen years cataract began to rapidly disappear, a cataract that all local ophthalmologists knew almost by heart. When I demonstrated the case before the Indian Medical Association local branch they were dumb with amazement. The ophthalmologists could hardly believe their eyes, and the hospital physicians stared at the earlier X- ray films and the present almost normal contours of the knees. The old man, 12 year invalided and boarded out as incurably by the Medical Board took temporary service with the Military as overseer and was about to put in a claim against the Board for damages for declaring him “Incurable” 12 years ago.
“FAMOUS CASE” NO.4.
Early in my practice a Mohammedan lady, age 40, came to my father for consultation. For 22 days she had been groaning under a severe rt. sided Migraine which the hospitals and specialists failed to influence with Saridon, Luminal and even Morphia. “Thin, scrawny, irritable, metrorrhagia, inter-menstrual bleeding.” I find in my case book, “in great distress”. Morphia has been given, said my father, what else is there left for me to give?” What better picture could I get but of Secale Cornutum. 3 doses of Secale Cor. 200, worked like a Miracle”. It amazed my father and me. No relapse for 3 years. I lost sight of her thereafter. Years later I published a paper on Ergot on the treatment of angio-spastic conditions (Jnl. I.M.A. Sept. Oct. 1942), nothing new to the Homoeopath but an eye-opener to the Allopath.
In recent years the allopath have proclaimed a new discovery, the treatment of Migraine with Ergot in the shape of Ergotamine-Tartarate (Gynergen-Sandoz) injections, Thus Lennox (Jnl.American Med. Assn, 1935, 105, 31) and v. Storch (Ibid. 1938, 111, 4) have written voluminously on it and their results are full of warnings against its dangers. What neither know is that their procedure is based on unconscious Homoeopathy, since Ergot produces identical migraines and can therefore cure it (Allen, Materia Medica of the Nosodes), and that we Homoeopaths get infinitely superior results with infinitesimal doses of Ergot if indicated and not otherwise.
“FAMOUS” CASE NO.5.
Again an Ergot case. A very aristocratic lady, age 53, had high fever, rigors, severe tachycardia, enlargements of Thyroid, and severe it. sided migraine sometimes going left. Leucocytic count 24, 000 no Malaria parasites found. I treated her with Aconite, Belladonna and later Gelsemium to no effect. On the 6th. day I myself got shaky and asked for a consultation. A professor of Clinical Medicine and an E.N.T. expert came and put the fright of my life into me by declaring it to be “suppuration of the Thyroid” and only Cibazol (luckily Penicillin had not come into vogue just then) could save the case, that is that they thought. I implored the lady to take Cibazol since I had failed, and in my heart of hearts I had no further confidence in myself. She resolutely refused to take Cibazol. In 1937 they had diagnosed her case as hyperthyroidism, had given her Plummers Iodine treatment in London, and she had reacted very badly to Sulfanamide once before. She told me that either I was to continue homoeopathic treatment or she was going to have no treatment at all.
You can imagine my distress and predicament. With none to advise me if I flounder, myself my own consultant and own final authority; and there I had lost all faith in myself and yet my patient retained it. The evening my mental state was one of utter confusion despair and shame. Each repertorisation gave the same seven drugs and their symptomatology, at least that evening, looked so damnably similar to each other. At least an idea struck me. At puberty she had thyroid enlargement. This is physiological at puberty, during early pregnancy; then why not at menopause? She was in menopause.
She was of Sepia type. Iodine had done her good in London. Iodine, Sepia, Nat. Mur Spongia are all of sea origin and have relation to salt metabolism. But “Suppuration of Thyroid” which the specialists proclaimed ? I had never heard of it. I came back and ransacked all my books and found no mention of it. I phoned my father and asked if he had ever seen “suppuration of the thyroid”. “Dont be an idiot” my father growled “it never suppurates because it is too vascular”. When in despair, sometimes a sort of prayer goes up, though I dont remember ever having consciously prayed in my life.
But suddenly a statement of Kobert came into my mind-ERGOT ! – “For the paralytic forms of migraine, the disease of the Central Nervous System, progressive bulbar paralysis and perhaps nervous disorders of Graves disease…” (Kobert, Lehrbuch der Pharmacotherapie, p 639). And I sent her Thyroidin 30, I dose and Sec. Cor 200, 3 doses with despair in my heart as to its results. I was spared a nervous breakdown myself when next morning I was told that the temperature was normal and the lady very well. The enlarged Thyroid slowly disappeared with no “suppuration” and my confidence in Homoeopathic restored. Homoeopathy won.
Remember, no case comes to me unless it has failed at the hands of hospitals and allopathic specialists. Each case I “cure” must become “Famous” because it means “Homoeopathy succeeded where scientific Medicine” had failed. In itself, each case, homoeopathically considered, is commonplace. It assumes the role of the “Miraculous” only when compared to the bungling and helpless cumbrousness of Allopathy, Unani or Ayurveda. Seven thousand “hopeless” allopathic cast off cases as failures seeking the aid of a humble self-taught Homoeopath in eight years is no mean tribute to the growing prestige of Homoeopathy in a town where it was unknown eight years ago. Seven thousand “incurable” cases becoming cured and therefore “famous” through “similia similibus curentur” at the hands of a single novice is not to be ignored or laughed at any more-at least not by our Allopaths.
